LANDESANSTALT TEUPITZ [DE]

Exploration #198 Landesanstalt Teupitz. In the years between 1905 and 1908, the psychiatric hospital Landesanstalt Teupitz was built as a self-sufficient institution from 28 individual buildings with clear Art Nouveau influences.

During the First World War, it was used for the first time as a military hospital, then again as a so-called state insane asylum; at the beginning of the 1930s, 1,660 patients lived here. At the beginning of the 1940s, the clinic was subordinate to the Bernburg killing centre, where, according to the National Socialist eugenic-racial ideas, mentally and physically handicapped persons, mentally ill persons and persons classified as antisocial were exterminated within the framework of the euthanasia action “T4”, of whom more than 1,500 came from Teupitz.

Some buildings were reopened after the war as a psychiatric institution, but the majority were converted into a Soviet military hospital, which explains the Cyrillic lettering throughout. Since the withdrawal of the Russian forces after reunification and the rebuilding of the psychiatric hospital in 1997, the houses have been empty, the grounds are hardly affected by vandalism due to their remoteness, most of the damage is due to natural decay, and the former park has now turned into a dense forest area where roe deer and wild boar roam. From autumn 2021 the Landesanstalt Teupitz is totally fenced off with a 2.5m high fence and monitored by cameras.